“Vitamin C And The Common Cold”
Over 200 viruses can cause common cold symptoms including runny nose, congestion, sneezing, sore throat, cough, and sometimes headache, fever and red eyes. The common cold is one of the major causes of doctor visits in high-income countries and of absenteeism from work and school. The common cold is usually caused by one of the respiratory viruses, so antibiotics are useless and therefore other treatment options are of considerable interest. In the 1970s, Nobel laureate, Linus Pauling, concluded from earlier placebo-controlled trials that vitamin C would prevent and alleviate the common cold. Consequently, vitamin C has been heavily marketed and claimed to be a cold preventative and a therapeutic agent. Actually, vitamin C has been proposed for treating respiratory infections since it was isolated in the 1930s.
